ESSAY 10
WHAT IF I NEVER LEFT JAPAN?
by Jeffrey C. Branch
On Sunday, December 10, 1978, I left Japan after a wonderful year and a half spent there, taking in the sights, the sounds, enjoying the food, the people and, most of all, Pink Lady. Nothing else I experienced in the next seventeen plus years I spent in the Navy came even remotely close to those glorious eighteen months in the Land of the Rising Sun. In short, being in Japan had changed my life in ways that, even to this day, I find hard to put into words. Imagine how I’d felt if I had MET Mie and Kei while I was there! However, the Navy needed me elsewhere, so I had to leave, though somewhat reluctantly. So, that brings up this question, one I’ve pondered for thirty years now: what if I never left Japan?
By “never left”, I mean, staying in Japan for the entire four years of my first enlistment in the Navy, which would have taken me up to July of 1980. Now, I was only a Seaman Apprentice in 1978, being that low on the totem pole, I had no say as far as to where I would go on my next assignment, in this case, my next ship which was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia. After the time spent in the incredibly exotic and fantastic environment that was Japan, Virginia wound up being a dreadful letdown, and that was before going on a Mediterranean cruise where Italy, Spain, France and Israel were in no way comparable in my mind to the likes of South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia in a Western Pacific (Westpac) cruise. But I digress. If, by some quirk of fate, I had a choice thirty years ago, yes, I would indeed have opted to stay in Japan for the duration of that first enlistment. And if I had, a great deal would probably have turned out differently for me in the long run in terms of my passion for Pink Lady.
Now, if I had stayed in Japan, that certainly would’ve afforded me the opportunity to get my grubby mitts on more PL stuff, books, pictures, cassette tapes of their music, and maybe, just maybe if I had worked things just right, I could have even managed to catch a concert, something I failed to do between September of 1977 and December of ’78. Of course, that would have required my coming up with the idea to catch a live show, something I must admit had never occurred to me. Some fan I am, right? As much as I enjoyed seeing Mie and Kei during their reunion tour in 2003, it would really have been nothing short of awesome to have seen the Ladies when they were in their early 20’s and in their prime as performers, and at the time when they ruled as the top music act in all of Japan and were popular beyond all belief. As I’ve said time and again, Pink Lady wasn’t just an act, they were a phenomenon the likes of which had never been seen before, or since, and I was in the middle of that amazing hysteria.
But, on the flip side, if I hadn’t been transferred, I would’ve missed out on a small part of that Pink Lady hysteria when it came to the States. As fans know, PL’s handlers decided to take a shot at fame and fortune for Mie and Kei in America, beginning of course with the release of their first English single, the Disco themed “Kiss in the Dark”. Pink Lady had already become a curiosity, what with the combination of good looks; girlish charm; amazing talent as both singers and dancers and word of their unparalleled success in Japan, the concept of a foreign act that didn’t speak English making inroads in the U.S. music market, a la ABBA became quite irresistible. And when Mie and Kei performed KITD on the Leif Garrett Special in May of 1979, their first appearance on American television, interest in Pink Lady went through the roof, thanks mainly to legions of teenagers who were absolutely enthralled with Mie and Kei. There were articles aplenty about the girls in teen magazines, Life, even Rolling Stone.
And all of that was before KITD appeared on the Billboard record charts a month later where, in the span of three short weeks, it cracked the top 40. By all appearances, the song seemed destined to be number one with a bullet. Already there had been talk of the amazing novelty of Pink Lady becoming the first Japanese act to reach the top of the charts since “Sukiyaki” by the late Kyu Sakamoto in 1963. Of course, that never came to pass, after reaching as high as #37, KITD totally disappeared from the charts the very next week, leading to my longtime lament which I’ve voiced on this website many, many of times before that if the song had been released a year or even six months earlier than it had when Disco was at the height of its popularity, Mie and Kei most would have been chart toppers. I’ll go to my grave convinced of that! Still, those were some heady times for PL fans like me, and I was there to experience all that magic as Mie and Kei made their inroads on the U.S. music market. But that wasn’t all.
Yep, little under a year later on March 1, 1980, came Pink Lady & Jeff. Mie and Kei’s four minute appearance with Leif Garrett was nothing compared to their co-starring in that limited run comedy-variety show on NBC with the eminently forgettable Jeff Altman. Oh, sure, PL & J was a six episode train wreck (some markets, like Philadelphia, where I live, only saw four) and an embarrassment for the Peacock Network as it was a four-alarm calamity derailed by lame scripts, cornball humor, lousy acting and D-list guest stars. And, on top of all that, there was the humiliating indignity of Mie and Kei being subjected to Sid Caesar’s unfunny Japanese stereotype when he played their “Papa-san” in cringe-worthy skits that appeared in half of the show’s episodes. There were times when I felt sorry for the girls who had no choice but to put up with that nonsense (remember, they were ordered by their handlers to do the show), and yet, I was glued to the tube, watching my beloved heroines on U.S. television.
Bottom line, if I had been in Japan through most of 1980, I would never have seen the show, might not have even heard of it until almost two decades later when I read the Pink Lady entry in Mark Schilling’s 1996 compendium, The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture. And if the show hadn’t been released on DVD by Rhino in 2002, the regret over not having seen PL & J, even if it was a laughable catastrophe would’ve been terrible. And so, while I certainly would’ve enjoyed more quality time and fun time in Japan if I had been allowed to stay, when I think about everything I would’ve missed out on by not being back home when Pink Lady launched their short-lived blitz on the American pop culture scene, I realize just how fortunate I truly was to have left.